MAKE me a stave of song, the Master said,

On yonder cherry-bough, whose white and red

Hangs in the sunset over those green seas.

The young knight looked upon his untried blade,

Then shrugged his wings of gold and blue brocade:

How should a warrior play with thoughts like these?

Fresh from the battle, in that self-same hour,

A mail-clad warrior watched each delicate flower

Close in that cloud of beauty against the West.

Drinking the last deep light, he watched it long.

He raised his face as if to pray. The strong,

The Master whispered, are the tenderest.

I

IN lonely bays

Where Love runs wild,

All among the flowering grasses,

Where light, light, light, as a sea-bird’s wing

The chuckle of the child-god passes,

O, to awake, to shake away the night

And find you dreaming there,

On the other side of death, with the sea-wind blowing round you,

And the scent of the thyme in your hair.

II

Tho’ beauty perish,

Perish like a flower,

And song be an idle breath,

Tho’ heaven be a dream, and youth for but an hour,

And life much less than death,

And the Maker less than that He made,

And hope less than despair,

If Death have shores where Love runs wild

I think you might be there.

III

Re-born, re-born

From the splendid sea,

There should you awake and sing,

With every supple sweet from the head to the feet

Modelled like a wood-dove’s wing,—

O, to awake, to shake away the night,

And find you happy there,

On the other side of death, with the sea-wind blowing round you,

And the scent of the thyme in your hair.

YOU cannot leave a new house

With any open door,

But a strange guest will enter it

And never leave it more.

Build it on a waste land,

Dreary as a sin.

Leave her but a broken gate,

And Beauty will come in.

Build it all of scarlet brick.

Work your wicked will.

Dump it on an ash-heap

Then—O then, be still.

Sit and watch your new house.

Leave an open door.

A strange guest will enter it

And never leave it more.

She will make your raw wood

Mellower than gold.

She will take your new lamps

And sell them for old.

She will crumble all your pride,

Break your folly down.

Much that you rejected

She will bless and crown.

She will rust your naked roof,

Split your pavement through,

Dip her brush in sun and moon

And colour it anew.

Leave her but a window

Wide to wind and rain,

You shall find her footsteps

When you come again.

Though she keep you waiting

Many months or years,

She shall stain and make it

Beautiful with tears.

She shall hurt and heal it,

Soften it and save,

Blessing it, until it stand

Stronger than the grave.

You cannot leave a new house

With any open door,

But a strange guest will enter it

And never leave it more.

O TO creep in by candle-light,

When all the world is fast asleep,

Out of the cold winds, out of the night,

Where the nettles wave and the rains weep!

O, to creep in, lifting the latch

So quietly that no soul could hear,

And, at those embers in the gloom,

Quietly light one careful match—

You should not hear it, have no fear—

And light the candle and look round

The old familiar room;

To see the old books upon the wall

And lovingly take one down again,

And hear—O, strange to those that lay

So patiently underground—

The ticking of the clock, the sound

Of clicking embers ...

watch the play

Of shadows ...

till the implacable call

Of morning turn our faces grey;

And, or ever we go, we lift and kiss

Some idle thing that your hands may touch,

Some paper or book that your hands let fall,

And we never—when living—had cared so much

As to glance upon twice ...

But now, O bliss

To kiss and to cherish it, moaning our pain,

Ere we creep to the silence again.

DAZZLE of the sea, azure of the sky, glitter of the dew on the grass,

Pass to Oblivion

In the darkness

With all that ever is or ever was.

Yet, O flocks of cloud with your violet shadows,

O white may crowding o’er the lane,

The Shepherd that drives you

To the darkness

Shall lead you thro’ the crimson dawn again.

Bear your load of beauty to the sunset, and the golden gates of death.

The Eternal shall remember

In the darkness

And recall you at a word, at a breath.

Even as the mind of a man may remember his lost and linkless hours,

This world that is scattered

To the darkness

Dismembered and dis-petalled, clouds and flowers,

Cities, suns, and systems, as He said of old, they sleep! Not a bird, not a leaf shall pass by,

But on the day of remembrance

In the darkness,

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,

They shall flash to their places in the music of the whole, even as our fathers said!

For a Power shall remember

In the darkness,

And the universal sea give up her dead.

WITHIN, it was colour and laughter, warmth and wine.

Without, it was darkness, hunger and bitter cold,

Where those white globes on the wet Embankment shine,

Greasing the Thames with gold.

And was it a bundle of fog in the dark drew nigh?

A bundle of rags and bones it crept to the light,—

A monstrous thing that coughed as it shuffled by,

A shape of the shapeless night,

Spawned as brown things that mimic their mothering earth,

Green creeping things that the grass lifts to the sun,

Out of its wrongs the City had brought to the birth

The shape of those wrongs, in one.

A woman, a woman whose lips had once been kissed,

(It was Christmas Eve, and the bells began their chime!)

She sank to a seat like a coughing bundle of mist

Exhaled from the river-slime.

Bells for the birth of Christ! She heard, and she thought—

Vacantly—of her man, that was long since dead,

The smell of the Christmas food, and the drink they had bought

Together, the year they were wed.

She thought of their one-room home, and the night-long sigh

Recalled, as he slept, of his breath in her loosened hair.

He slept. She opened her haggard eyes with a cry.

But only the night was there.

Nay, out of the formless night, at her furtive glance,

Crouched at the end of her cold wet bench, there grew

A bundle of fog, a bundle of rags that, perchance,

Once was a woman, too.

A huddled shape, a fungus of foul grey mist

Spawned of the river, in peace and much good-will,

And even the woman whose lips had once been kissed

Wondered, it crouched so still.

No breath, no shadow of breath in the lamp-light smoked,

It crouched so still—that bunch at the bench’s end.

She stretched her neck like a crow, then leaned and croaked,

“A Merry Christmas, friend!”

She rose, and peered, peered at its vacant eyes.

Touched its cold claws. Its arms of knotted bone

Were wands of ice; like iron rods the thighs;

The left breast—like a stone.

Far, far along the rows of warmth and light

The Christmas waits, with cornet and bassoon,

Carolled “While shepherds watched their flocks by night.”

The bells pealed to the moon.

A bundle of rags and bones, a bundle of mist,

And never a hell or heaven to hear or see,

The woman, the woman whose lips had once been kissed,

Knelt down feverishly.

She plucked the shawl out of that frozen clutch.

The dead are dead. Why should the living freeze?

She touched the cold flesh that she feared to touch

Kneeling upon her knees.

Her palsied hands unlaced the shoes—good shoes!—

She tore them quick from the crooked yellow feet.

If Death be generous, why should Life refuse

To take, and pawn, and eat?

A heavy step drew nearer thro’ the mist.

She bundled them into the shawl. Her eyes were bright.

The woman, the woman whose lips had once been kissed,

Slunk, chuckling, thro’ the night.

NOT memory of a vanished bliss,

But suddenly to know,

I had forgotten! This, O this

With iron crowned my woe:

To know that on some midnight sea

Whence none could lift the pall

A drowning hand was waved to me,

Then—swept beyond recall.

HIS angels fell, and myriads grope

In doubt, for this dark cause alone,—

That God hath given them room for hope,

And made their struggling wills their own.

In the same breath, they plead for chains

And freedom; pray for ordered spheres,

Then murmur that the sun retains

Its course, unchecked by smiles or tears.

“The Omnipotent would grant us this,

Or else He is not good,” they say;

But O, the Power withholds their bliss

Till they agree what prayer to pray.

NOT in those eyes, too kind for truth,

Which dare not note how beauties wane;

Nor in that crueller joy of youth

Which turns from sorrow with disdain;

No—no—not there,

Abides the hope that answers our despair.

Lie where they hid thy dead away.

Knock on that unrelenting door;

Then break, O desolate heart, and say

Farewell, farewell, for evermore ...

There, only there,

Abides the hope that conquers all despair.

The silence that refused to bless

Till grief had turned the heart to stone ...

What soul compact of nothingness

Could hear so fierce a trumpet blown?

Then hear, O hear,

The dreadful hope that equals all despair.

There, till the deep atoning Might

Shall answer all that each can pray,

The very boundlessness of night

Proclaims—and waits—an equal day.

There, only there,

—But O, sing low, sweet strings, lest hope take wing!—

Abides the hope that answers all despair.

HOW passionately it opens after rain,

And O, how like a prayer

To those great shining skies! Do they disdain

A bride so small and fair?

See the imploring petals, how they part

And utterly lay bare

The perishing treasures of that piteous heart

In wild surrender there.

What? Would’st thou, too, drink up the Eternal bliss,

Ecstatically dare,

O, little bride of God, to invoke His kiss?—

But O, how like a prayer!

THE May-tree on the hill

Stands in the night

So fragrant and so still,

So dusky white.

That, stealing from the wood

In that sweet air,

You’d think Diana stood

Before you there.

If it be so, her bloom

Trembles with bliss.

She waits across the gloom

Her shepherd’s kiss.

Touch her. A bird will start

From those pure snows,—

The dark and fluttering heart

Endymion knows.

READ them? Strangle that sick cry?

Christ God, no!

Shut the box. Lock the lid.

You’ll be safer—so.

Could you read one crookéd word

Scrawled so long ago,

Love would rise before your face

And blind you, like a blow.

Close it! Quickly! For I caught,

In a childish hand,

Something that she never thought

I should understand.

So I crouch. And shall our God

Prove Him baser yet,

He who filled her eyes with light

Quite renounce His debt,

Give her worlds to love, and then—

Ere the sun be set,

Strike her down and coffin all?

Christ, shall He forget?

Close it! Quickly! For I caught,

In a childish hand,

Something that she never thought

I should understand.

IMMENSE and silent night,

Over the lonely downs I go;

And the deep gloom is pricked with points of light

Above me and below.

I cannot break the bars

Of Time and Fate; and if I scan the sky,

There comes to me, questioning those cold stars,

No signal, no reply.

Yet are they less than these—

These village-lights, which I do scan

Below me, or far out on darkling seas

Those messages from man?

Round me the darkness rolls.

Out of the depth, each lance of light

Shoots from lost lanthorns, thrills from living souls,

And shall I doubt the height?

No signal? No reply?

As through the deepening night I roam,

Hope opens all her casements in the sky

And lights the lamps of home.

TO Eden Garden—so the sign-post said;

I could not see the road;

But, where the Sussex clover blossomed red

Its runaway blisses flowed.

I traced them back for many a night and day,

—The way she, too, had gone!—

Till lo, the terrible Angel in the way

Inexorably shone.

Up to the Gates, a fearless fool I came;

Between the lily and rose

Fluttering these evil rags of sordid shame,

A thing to scare the crows.

“And hath the Master given thee, then, no word?”

The scornful Angel smiled:

Only two souls may pass my Flaming Sword,—

The Lover and the Child.

I raised my head,—“Now let all hell make mirth,

Where Love went, I go, too!”

His eyes met mine. The sword sank to the earth,

And let her lover through.

AS constant lovers may rejoice

With seas between, with worlds between,

Because a fragrance and a voice

Are round them everywhere:

So let me travel to the grave,

Believing still—for I have seen—

That Love’s triumphant banners wave

Beyond my own despair.

I have no trust in my own worth;

Yet have I faith, O love, for you,

That every beauty in bloom or leaf,

That even age and wrong

May touch, may hurt you, on this earth,

But only, only as kisses do;

Or as the fretted string of grief

Completes the bliss of song;

That you shall see, on any grave

The snow fall, like that unseen hand

Which O, so often, pressed your hair

To cherish and console:

That seas may roar and winds rave

But you shall feel and understand

What vast caresses everywhere

Convey you to the goal.

So was it always in the years

When Love began, when Love began

With eyes that were not touched of tears

And lips that still could sing—

And all around us, in the may,

The child-god with his laughter ran,

And every bloom, on every spray,

Betrayed his fluttering wing.

So hold it, keep it, count it, sweet,

Until the end, until the end.

It is not cruelty, but bliss

That pains and is so fond:

Crush life like thyme beneath your feet,

And O, my love, when that strange friend,

The Shadow of Wings, which men call Death

Shall close your eyes, with that last kiss,

Ask not His name. A rosier breath

Shall waken you—beyond.

TONGUE hath not told it,

Heart hath not known;

Yet shall the bough swing

When it hath flown.

Dreams have denied it,

Fools forsworn:

Yet it hath comforted

Each man born.

Once and again it is

Blown to me,

Sweet from the wild thyme,

Salt from the sea;

Blown thro’ the ferns

Faint from the sky;

Shadowed in water,

Yet clear as a cry.

Light on a face,

Or touch of a hand,

Making my still heart

Understand.

Earth hath not seen it.

Nor heaven above,

Yet shall the wild bough

Bend with the Dove.

Yea, tho’ the bloom fall

Under Thy feet,

Veni, Creator,

Paraclete!

LISTEN! On sweetening air

The blackbird growing bold

Flings out, where green boughs glisten,

Three splashes of wild gold.

Daughter of April, hear;

And hear, O barefoot boy!

That carol of wild sweet water

Has washed the world with joy.

Glisten, O fragrant earth

Assoiled by heaven anew,

And O, ye lovers, listen,

With eyes that glisten, too.

NO—not that he is dead. The pang’s not there,

Nor in the City’s many-coloured bloom

Of swift black-lettered posters, which the throng

Passes with bovine stare,

To say He is dead and Is it going to rain?

Or hum stray snatches of a rag-time song.

Nor is it in that falsest shibboleth

(Which orators toss to the dumb scorn of death)

That all the world stands weeping at his tomb.

London is dining, dancing, through it all.

And, in the unchecked smiles along the street

Where men, that slightly knew him, lightly meet,

With all the old indifferent grimaces,

There is no jot of grief, no tittle of pain.

No. No. For nearer things do most tears fall.

Grief is for near and little things. But pride,

O, pride was to be found by two or three,

And glory in his great battling memory,

Prouder and purer than the loud world knows,

In one more dreadful sign, the day he died—

The dreadful light upon a thousand faces,

The peace upon the faces of his foes.

HE that has loyally served the State

Whereof he found himself a part,

Or spent his life-blood to create

A kingdom’s treasure in his art;

Who sees the enemies of his land

Applauded, by her sects and schools;

And the high thought they scarce had scanned

Derided and befogged by fools;

—Better to know it soon than late!—

Struggling, he wins a meed of praise;

Achieving, he is dogged by hate

And furtive malice all his days.

O, Emperor of the Stoic clan,

Enfold him, then, with nobler pride.

Teach him that nought can hurt a man

Who will not turn or stoop to chide.

Can falsehood kindle or bedim

One bay-leaf in his quiet crown?

Ten thousand Lies may pluck at him,

But only Truth can tear him down.

Why should he heed the thing they say?

They never asked if it were true.

Why brush one scribbler’s tale away

For others to invent a new?

No, let him search his heart, secure

—If Truth be there—from tongue or pen;

And teach us, Emperor, to endure,

To think like Romans and like men.

THERE is a Master in my heart

To whom, though oft against my will,

I bring the songs I sing apart

And strive to think that they fulfil

His silent law, within my heart.

But He is blind to my desires,

And deaf to all that I would plead:

He tests my truth at purer fires

And shames my purple with His need.

He claims my deeds, not my desires.

And often when my comrades praise,

I sadden, for He turns from me!

But, sometimes, when they blame, I raise

Mine eyes to His, and in them see

A tenderness too deep for praise.

He is not to be bought with gold,

Or lured by thornless crowns of fame;

But when some rebel thought hath sold

Him to dishonour and to shame,

And my heart’s Pilate cries, “Behold,”

“Behold the Man,” I know Him then;

And all those wild thronged clamours die

In my heart’s judgment hall again,

Or if it ring with “Crucify!”

Some few are faithful even then.

Some few sad thoughts,—one bears His cross;

To that dark Calvary of my pride;

One stands far off and mourns His loss,

And one poor thief on either side

Hangs on his own unworthy cross.

And one—O, truth in ancient guise!—

Rails, and one bids him cease alway,

And the God turns His hungering eyes

On that poor thought with, “Thou, this day,

Shalt sing, shalt sing, in Paradise.”

THE exceeding weight of glory bowed

My head, in that pure clime:

I found a road that ran through cloud

Along the coasts of Time....

Out of that mist of years there came

A cross-barred gate of wood.

I clutched, I kissed the unheavenly frame

So hard, it trickled blood.

My head upon the iron lay.

I slobbered blood and foam.

Yea, like a dog, I knew the way,

A hundred yards from home.

Iron and blood and wood! They knew

The secret of that cry

When the Eternal Passion drew

Their Maker through—to die.

I knew each little hawthorn-cloud

Along my misty lane,

Then my heart burst. She sobbed aloud,

Between my arms again.

YES. You have shattered many an ancient wrong,

And we were with you, heart and mind and soul,

But there are fools who cast away control

In life and thought and art; because the Strong—

We dare to say it—have now destroyed so long,

That careless minds forget the unchanging goal—

The nobler Order which shall make us whole,

The Service which is freedom, beauty, song.

We shall be stoned as traitors to your cause

While the real traitors that you did not know,

Chaos and Vice, trumpet themselves as free.

Pray God that, loyal to the Eternal laws,

A little remnant, mauled by friend and foe,

Save you through Truth, and bring you Liberty.

I

TRUMPETER, sound the great recall!

Swift, O swift, for the squadrons break,

The long lines waver, mazed in the gloom!

Hither and thither the blind host blunders.

Stand thou firm for a dead Man’s sake,

Firm where the ranks reel down to their doom,

Stand thou firm in the midst of the thunders,

Stand where the steeds and the riders fall,

Set the bronze to thy lips and sound

A rally to ring the whole world round.

Trumpeter, rally us, rally us, rally us!

Sound the great recall.

II

Trumpeter, sound for the ancient heights!

Clouds of the earth-born battle cloak

The heaven that our fathers held from of old;

And we—shall we prate to their sons of the gain

In gold or bread? Through yonder smoke

The heights that never were won with gold

Wait, still bright with their old red stain,

For the thousand chariots of God again,

And the steel that swept thro’ a hundred fights

With the Ironsides, equal to life and death,

The steel, the steel of their ancient faith.

Trumpeter, rally us, rally us, rally us!

Sound for the sun-lit heights.

III

Trumpeter, sound for the faith again!

Blind and deaf with the dust and the blood,

Clashing together we know not whither

The tides of the battle would have us advance.

Stand thou firm in the crimson flood,

Send the lightning of thy great cry

Through the thunders, athwart the storm,

Sound till the trumpets of God reply

From the heights we have lost in the steadfast sky,

From the Strength we despised and rejected. Then,

Locking the ranks as they form and form,

Lift us forward, banner and lance,

Mailed in the faith of Cromwell’s men,

When from their burning hearts they hurled

The gage of heaven against the world!

Trumpeter, rally us, rally us, rally us,

Up to the heights again.

IV

Trumpeter, sound for the last Crusade!

Sound for the fire of the red-cross kings,

Sound for the passion, the splendour, the pity

That swept the world for a dead Man’s sake,

Sound, till the answering trumpet rings

Clear from the heights of the holy City,

Sound till the lions of England awake,

Sound for the tomb that our lives have betrayed;

O’er broken shrine and abandoned wall,

Trumpeter, sound the great recall,

Trumpeter, rally us, rally us, rally us;

Sound for the last Crusade!

V

Trumpeter, sound for the splendour of God!

Sound the music whose name is law,

Whose service is perfect freedom still,

The order august that rules the stars.

Bid the anarchs of night withdraw,

Too long the destroyers have worked their will,

Sound for the last, the last of the wars.

Sound for the heights that our fathers trod,

When truth was truth and love was love,

With a hell beneath, but a heaven above,

Trumpeter, rally us, up to the heights of it!

Sound for the City of God.

BECAUSE her heart is all too proud

—Canada! Canada! fair young Canada—

To breathe the might of her love aloud,

Be quick, O Motherland!

Because her soul is wholly free

—Canada kneels, thy daughter, Canada—

England, look in her eyes and see,

Honour and understand.

Because her pride at thy masthead shines,

—Canada! Canada!—queenly Canada

Bows with all her breathing pines,

All her fragrant firs.

Because our isle is little and old

—Canada! Canada!—young-eyed Canada

Gives thee, Mother, her hands to hold,

And makes thy glory hers.

Because thy Fleet is hers for aye,

—Canada! Canada!—clear-souled Canada,

Ere the war-cloud roll this way,

Bids the world beware.

Her heart, her soul, her sword are thine

—Thine the guns, the guns of Canada!—

The ships are foaming into line,

And Canada will be there.

ALL along the white chalk coast

The mist lifts clear.

Wight is glimmering like a ghost.

The ship draws near.

Little inch-wide meadows

Lost so many a day,

The first time I knew you

Was when I turned away.

Island—little island—

Lost so many a year,

Mother of all I leave behind

—Draw me near!—

Mother of half the rolling world,

And O, so little and gray,

The first time I found you

Was when I turned away.

Over yon green water

Sussex lies.

But the slow mists gather

In our eyes.

England, little island

—God, how dear!—

Fold me in your mighty arms,

Draw me near.

Little tawny roofs of home,

Nestling in the gray,

Where the smell of Sussex loam

Blows across the bay ...

Fold me, teach me, draw me close,

Lest in death I say

The first time I loved you

Was when I turned away.

I

The Guns of H.M.S. Royal Sovereign

OCEAN-MOTHER of England, thine is the crowning acclaim.

Here, in the morning of battle, from over the world and beyond,

Here, by our fleets of steel, silently foam into line

Fleets of our glorious dead, thy shadowy oak-walled ships.

Mother, for O, thy soul must speak thro’ our iron lips!

How should we speak to the ages, unless with a word of thine?

Utter it, Victory! Let thy great signal flash thro’ the flame!

Answer, Bellerophon, Marlborough, Thunderer, Condor, respond!

II

The Guns of H.M.S. Majestic

Out of the ages we speak unto you, O ye ages to be.

Rocks of Sevastopol, echo our thunder-word, bruit it afar.

Roll it, O Mediterranean, round by Gibraltar again.

Buffet it, Porto Bello, back to the Nile once more.

Answer it, great St. Vincent! Answer it, Elsinore,

Buffet it back from your crags and roll it over the main!

Heights of Quebec, O hear and re-echo it back to the Baltic Sea!

Answer it, Camperdown! Answer it, answer it, Trafalgar!

III

The Guns of H.M.S. Rainbow

How should we speak to the ages, if not with a word of thine,

Maker of cloud and harvest, foam and the sea-bird’s wing,

Ocean-Mother of England and all things living and free?

Deep that wast moved by the Spirit to bloom with the first white morn,

Mother of Light and Freedom, mother of hopes unborn,

Speak, O world-wide welder of nations, O Soul of the sea!

Thine was the watchword that called us of old o’er the gray sky-line:

Lift thy stormy salute. It is freedom and peace that we bring.

IV

The Guns of H.M.S. Victory

Therefore on thee we call, O Mother, for we are thy sons.

Speak, with thy world-wide voice, O wake us anew from our sleep!

Speak, for the Light of the world still lives and grows on thy face.

Give us the ancient Word once more, the unchangeable Word,—

This that Nelson knew, this that Effingham heard,

This that resounds for ever in all the hearts of our race,

This that lives for a moment on the iron lips of our guns,

This—that echoes for ever and ever—the Word of the Deep.

V

The Guns of H.M.S. Dreadnought

How shall a king be saved by the multitude of an host?

Was not the answer thine, when fleet upon fleet swept, hurled

Blind thro’ the dark North Sea, with all their invincible ships?

Thine was the answer, O mother of all men born to be free!

Witness again, Cape Wrath!—O thine, everlastingly,

Thine as Freedom arose and rolled thy song from her lips,

Thine when she ’stablished her throne in thy sight, on our rough rock-coast,

Thine with thy lustral glory and thunder, washing the world.

VI

The Guns of H.M.S. Temeraire

O for that ancient cry of the watch at the midnight bell,

Under the unknown stars, from the decks that Frobisher trod.

Hark, Before the world?—he questions a fleet in the dark!

Answer it, friend or foe! And, ringing from mast to mast,

Mother, hast thou forgotten what cry in the dark went past,

Answering still as he questioned? Before the world? O, hark,

Ringing anear, Before the world? ... was God ... All’s well!

Dying afar ... Before the world? ... All’s well ... was God!

VII

The Guns of H.M.S. Revenge

Raleigh and Grenville heard it, Knights of the Ocean-sea.

Have we forgotten it only, we with our leagues of steel?

Give us our watchword again, O mother, in this great hour!

Here, in the morning of battle, here as we gather our might,

Here, as the nations of earth in the light of thy freedom unite,

Shake our hearts with thy Word, O ’stablish our peace on thy power!

’Stablish our power on thy peace, thy glory, thy liberty,

’Stablish on thy deep Word the throne of our Commonweal.

VIII

The Guns of H.M.S. Leviathan

They that go down to the sea in ships—they heard it of old—

They shall behold His wonders, alone on the Deep, the Deep!

Have we forgotten, we only? O, rend the heavens again,

Voice of the Everlasting, shake the great hills with thy breath!

Roll the Voice of our God thro’ the valleys of doubt and death!

Waken the fog-bound cities with the shout of the wind-swept main,

Inland over the smouldering plains, till the mists unfold,

Darkness die, and England, England arise from sleep.

IX

The Guns of H.M.S. Triumph

Queen of the North and the South, Queen of our ocean-renown,

England, England, England, O lift thine eyes to the sun!

Wake, for the hope of the whole world yearns to thee, watches and waits!

Now on the full flood-tide of the ages, the supreme hour

Beacons thee onward in might to the purpose and crown of thy power.

Hark, for the whole Atlantic thunders against thy gates,

Take the Crown of all Time, all might, earth’s crowning Crown,

Throne thy children in peace and in freedom together, O weld them in one.

X

The Guns of the Fleet

Throne them in triumph together. Thine is the crowning cry!

Thine the glory for ever in the nation born of thy womb!

Thine the Sword and the Shield, and the shout that Salamis heard,

Surging in Æschylean splendour, earth-shaking acclaim!

Ocean-mother of England, thine is the throne of her fame.

Breaker of many fleets, O thine the victorious word,

Thine the Sun and the Freedom, the God and the wind-swept sky,

Thine the thunder and thine the lightning, thine the doom.